Somehow ancient

As we have noted earlier, the new imagined communities (including the still-born, but still imagined USGA [United States of Great Austria]) conjured up by lexicography and print-capitalism always regarded themselves as somehow ancient. In an age in which ‘history’ itself was still widely conceived in terms of’great events’ and ‘great leaders’, pearls strung along a thread of narrative, it was obviously tempting to decipher the community’s past in antique dynasties.